Satchel Paige Quotes

It’d taken me twenty-two years to get to the majors, but that first season in 1948 was only the mid-point of my career. There was a lot more to go. But it sure was a long time from Mobile.
Satchel Paige

It don’t matter what some of those talkers say, I wasn’t born six feet, three and a half inches tall, weighing a hundred and eighty pounds and wearing size fourteen shoes. And there wasn’t a baseball in my hand, either….
Satchel Paige

Nobody paid much attention when us kids by the bay was born. There were so many of us I guess it just didn’t matter much.
Satchel Paige

I was the seventh of eleven children in that little shack. My Dad, John, was a gardener, but he liked to be called a landscaper. My Mom, Lula, was a washerwoman. She was the real boss of our house, not Dad.
Satchel Paige

We raced for the bay and washed the dirt off. Only we didn’t just go anywhere on the bay. Just to certain parts. The white man got all the rest.
Satchel Paige

Everybody got to work when there are thirteen mouths to stuff. By the time I was about six, all my older brothers and sisters had steady jobs, even Wilson, who was only nine or ten.
Satchel Paige

We all gave our money to Mom so she could get food. She took real pains with what she bought. That was why I can’t remember us ever missing a meal.
Satchel Paige

When there wasn’t money for store food, we went fishing. There was always plenty of fish around Mobile. But even with the fish, it was poverty-stricken living before I knew what that meant.
Satchel Paige

[On how he got the name Satchel (instead of Leroy) with kids saying ‘You look like a walking satchel tree.’] I was down there, dragging a bag. I got a dime for it. We weren’t going to be eating much better if I made only a dime at a time so I got me a pole and some ropes. That let me sling two, three, or four satchels together and carry them at one time. You always got to be thinking to make money. My invention wasn’t a smart-looking thing, but it upped my income.
Satchel Paige

Watching … semi-pro ballplayers got me kind of interested in throwing. Only I couldn’t afford a baseball. So I took up rock throwing. That’s when I first found out I had control.
Satchel Paige

[On being able to control throwing a rock] It was a natural gift, one that let me put a baseball just about where I wanted it about anytime I wanted to. I could hit about anything with one of those rocks.
Satchel Paige

I used to kill me flying birds with rocks, too. Most people need shotguns to do what I did with those rocks.
Satchel Paige

[On his mother when he was a child] She didn’t know how it was when they told me I couldn’t swim where the white folks did. Then I realized maybe she did….
Satchel Paige

Since I threw those rocks so straight, I guess it was just natural that I started firing a baseball.
Satchel Paige

When I was ten and when I was fifty, there was one thing I could do – play baseball. And you better believe it.
Satchel Paige

[On first pitching as a kid] I was all arms and legs. I must have looked like an ostrich.
Satchel Paige

[More on first pitching as a kid] When I let go of the ball, I almost fell off that mound. But that ball whipped past three straight batters for strikeouts. I kept pumping for eight more innings. When I was done I had struck out sixteen and hadn’t given up a hit…
Satchel Paige

When those kids my age came up to the plate and I threw my trouble ball, they just wet their pants or cried. That’s how scared they were of my speed.
Satchel Paige

With all those kids I played with on the baseball team, I guess I should have had a lot of friends. But even when I was a kid, I was pretty much of a loner.
Satchel Paige

It seemed like a dream until they closed the door on me. Then I knew it was real. I was in the industrial school.
Satchel Paige

If I’d been left on the streets of Mobile to wander with those kids I’d been running around with, I’d of ended up as a big bum, a crook. That’s what happened to a lot of those other kids.
Satchel Paige

I know it may sound funny to talk about a reform school that way, but when you grow up as poor as me, a place like Mount Meigs can be mighty warm and good.
Satchel Paige

If they make you go where learning is flying around, some of it is bound to light on you.
Satchel Paige

Mother always told me if you tell a lie always rehearse it. If it don’t sound good to you, it won’t sound good to nobody else.
Satchel Paige